The success of social animals (including ourselves) can be attributed to efficiencies that arise from a division of labour. when the record signal reaches a level it has never perceived before could be a very effective mechanism to postpone, until the last possible moment, a potentially fatal decision. We also show that record dynamics may be involved in first exits by individually tagged ants even when their nest mates are allowed to re-enter the nest. So record dynamics may play a role in allocating individuals to tasks, both in emergencies and in everyday life. The dynamics of several complex but purely physical systems are also based on record signals but this is the first time they have been experimentally shown in a biological system. Introduction Ant societies are shaped by Melittin IC50 selection that operates, in part, at the level of the colony [1], so the success of the individual is intimately bound to that of its colony. Outside-nest work is dangerous and the rate of attrition of outside-nest workers through predation or adverse environmental conditions is often high. The life-cycles of ant societies are dominated by growth or decline [2]. Thus they are rarely at a steady state and are typically non-stationary. Here we induce non-stationarity by permanently eliminating all ants that exit the nest and compare these colonies with controls in which ants can freely leave and re-enter the nest. We use analytical methods developed for the analysis of out-of-equilibrium physical systems to explore the nature of the mechanism governing the decisions of individual ants to leave the nest. Indeed, biological systems are, like other systems in Nature, generically non-equilibrium systems since they are not isolated from external influences and continuously have a flux of mass or energy passing through them [3]. The null model for a system in which successive events are drawn from a diminishing pool is one with an exponentially declining event rate, as in radioactive decay. In this scenario there are either no interactions between the components or interactions between the components are not correlated with decay events. The simplest form of radioactive decay is one in which all the components have an identical decay probability, which can be modelled as a homogeneous Poisson process. Obviously ants are not all identical, so for our null model we implement a heterogeneous Poisson process by assuming that the component parts (the ants) vary in their decay (i.e. exit) probabilities. An alternative scenario that produces rapidly decreasing event rates is one in which events are triggered when a fluctuating variable – the record signal Melittin IC50 – exceeds its historical high water mark. If the record signal fluctuates randomly, the increment between successive record values becomes progressively smaller and the rate at which new records accrue drops Melittin IC50 Melittin IC50 off according to the inverse of time [4], [5]. Hence the rate of change is a function of the age of the system. An intuitive example of a rapidly decelerating record time-series (albeit one that is probably not based on record signals as defined in complex systems) is the accumulation of human sporting records, where the rate at which new records accumulate depends largely on the age of the sport [6], [7]. All cases in which fluctuating record signals trigger events, include strong interactions between the component parts and involve long-range correlations that span the entire system [8], [9], [10], [11]. While exponential decay is characterised by Poisson statistics in linear time, record dynamics is characterised by Poisson statistics in logarithmic time [4], [5], [8], [12], [13], [14]. What mechanism can generate such log-Poisson statistics? A fluctuating record signal will only produce log-Poisson statistics if each successive value TRADD of the underlying fluctuating signal is independent of its predecessors. Independence of the fluctuating record signal leads the record times to be uncorrelated in logarithmic time, so the record value at time log (Tk) is independent of previous records at time log (Tk-n). Crucially, the distribution of the underlying fluctuating signal from which the record signal is derived, must not change over time. Quite remarkably, irrespective of the probability distribution of the underlying fluctuating signal, records will accrue at a logarithmically decreasing rate [5]. We test whether nest leaving activity is compatible with either of two models of rapidly decelerating events: exponential decay as a null model or record dynamics. We further test the effects of heterogeneous units and varying colony size on the exponential decay model through a simulation parameterised from data. Materials and Methods Experiments Fifteen colonies were collected from rock crevices in Dorset, UK. They were housed in nests constructed from a cardboard cavity sandwiched between a pair.